In this article I examine the main conceptions of public reason in contemporary political
philosophy (Rawls, Habermas, critical theory) in order to set the frame for appreciating the
novelty of the pragmatist understanding of public reason as based upon the notion of
consequences and upon a theory of rationality as inquiry. The approach is inspired by
Dewey but is free from any concern with history of philosophy. The aim is to propose a
different understanding of the nature of public reason aimed at overcoming the limitations
of the existing approaches. Public reason is presented as the proper basis for discussing
contested issues in the broad frame of deep democracy.